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Senseless Death

March 20, 2012 by

I find myself once again dumbfounded, furious and dismayed; a bundle of independent emotions yet completely related to each other. Once again we have a child dead in the street, shot for no apparent reason other than he was young, Black and didn’t appear to belong.

www.bet.com

Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin, 17 was nothing more than young and black, that was his ‘crime’. According to the 911 tape, on which his assailant George Zimmerman says ‘These assholes always get away’. Trayvon’s crime? Walking while black in a neighborhood that George Zimmerman had decided he did not belong.  Trayvon apparently carried the cultural weight of suspicion on his young and narrow shoulders.

We will never know what really happened the night of 26-Feb-2012, when George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin had their fatal encounter. We will never know because only one of them remains breathing and in this world to tell us, George Zimmerman and he isn’t telling anything that doesn’t serve his own interest. All we are left with is the context of a senseless killing of a young man and a ‘defense’ based on laws that create vigilante ‘justice’ by self-designated citizen police. What we know or can at least extract from pictures and listening to 911 calls is this:

  • George was following Trayvon in his car. George made a 911 call describing Trayvon as suspicious in part because he was young and black.
  • George got out of his car, though he was told not to follow or confront Trayvon.
  • Trayvon ran and George chased him, despite being told not to by the 911 operator.
  • There was a confrontation between the man and the boy. The man shot the boy, killing him. The man has claimed self-defense and is using the “Stand Your Ground” law as the basis of his defense.

What is the likelihood the last statement makes any real sense? That a 17 year-old would confront a man, ten years older and nearly 100 lbs. heavier? Even the bravest, the boldest of young men might be cowed by this skirmish. We hear on the last 911 recordings the calls for help, these calls don’t sound as if they come from a grown man, do they? So what are we left with, what do we have?

www.thedailybeast.com

The Parents of Trayvon Martin

We have a family devastated by the death of their son and without answers to their basic question, “Why?” All we have is a local police that seem to have not done their job, are afraid even to have done the basic job we would expect in investigating the death of a young man, a 17 year old child doing nothing more than walking on the sidewalk in a neighborhood he in fact belonged in. All we have is a state Justice Department, refusing to do their job and turning over their responsibility to the Federal Department of Justice, is this fear or simple incompetence?

What we really have is another senseless death and another family shattered. Another mother laying her child in the cold ground, another father burying his son, another brother growing up without his big brother to guide and mentor him. What do we have? Trayvon Martin walked to the store to buy candy and a drink, upon his return he was met by suspicion and ultimately by lethal force for no reason other than he appeared to not belong. Why? Because he was young and black and George Zimmerman in his self-assigned role of neighborhood watch and apparently enforcement of standards believed he didn’t belong, for this and no other reason Trayvon Martin is dead.

Trayvon Martin is dead before he could vote. Trayvon Martin is dead before his high school graduation. Trayvon Martin is dead before he could make the choices in life most of us take for granted; what we will be when we achieve adulthood, according to his father he wanted to be an airplane engine mechanic. Trayvon Martin is dead before he could marry and have children. Trayvon Martin is dead at 17. What can we do?

www.cbsnews.com

Trayvon Martin
Is this what George Zimmerman saw?

We can demand justice for Trayvon and his family. We can demand the police; the Justice Department at all levels do their job to uncover the entire truth. We can demand those who failed to do their jobs pay the consequence of their inaction. We can refuse a platform to the family of George Zimmerman, the police or the Media that begins to shift the perception of who the victim of this encounter is. George Zimmerman is not the victim, whether he is a cold blooded murder is yet to be determined, nevertheless he is not the victim.

What can we do? We can remember Trayvon Martin, dead at 17, an incomprehensible tragedy.

Filed Under: Series: Crime and Punishment, Society Tagged With: , , , , ,

Social Defiance

March 13, 2012 by

It has been only 48 years since women were granted the right to determine for themselves when they would start families, freeing them to pursue their own interests including education and careers. Suddenly, the subject of our independence and choice has reached epic proportions; we are in the eye of the storm, fodder for every politician and evangelical minister with a pulpit from which to scream their wrath at our defiance.

Should we have seen this coming?

I wonder what brought us to this cultural impasse. How have we reached a place where social values, mores and even women’s standing in the community seem to be the battleground of the day and not just of the political Suffragette Float, New York 1913 Courtesy Wikipediaseason? The battle lines were drawn years ago; they have just not been the deeply divisive trenches they are today.

Our history as a nation saw women working toward suffrage for nearly a century before we gained any true recognition that we might own our humanity, our intellect and even our bodies. Since women won the right to vote and then our right to determine our reproductive health 45 years later it has been uphill, now it seems we are careening downhill on a cultural collision course.

Date

What Happened
11/5/1872 Susan B. Anthony, women’s suffragette, illegally casts a ballot at Rochester, New York in the presidential election to publicize the cause of a woman’s right to vote.
11/7/1893 Women in Colorado are granted the right to vote
8/2/1924 Women are given the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the United States constitution grants universal women’s suffrage.
6/7/1965 Griswold-v-Conneticut decided the fate of married couples and their right to determine when they would add children, meaning their right to privacy and access to hormonal birth control
3/22/1972 Eisenstadt-v-Baird, extended the right to access of hormonal birth control to unmarried women. Broadening the right of privacy and obviously the right to bodily control.
1/22/1973 Roe-v-Wade, finally the critical decision extending the rights of women to determine their needs, responsibilities and establishes privacy across even abortion.
2/2/2009 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act signed

We have fought each step of the way, not just to prove our worth and value but to retain those rights and privileges our mothers and grandmothers won for us. A fight to prove our value as independent voices in our Sandra Fluke Testifies Courtesy Wnd.com communities, our workplaces and sometimes even our own families has demoralized many of us already. For every step forward it seems there are those who would rather throw us down in humiliation, Slut Walk the brightest of us and define us all as ‘less than’.

The demagogues of radio and television are feeding our young women to the populace in a frenzy of public shaming for no cause other than they dare to stand up and disagree. Elected officials stand before their peers and compare women to barnyard animals as they fight to reduce access to safe abortion in their states (Georgia Legislature Rep. Terry England). The archaic views of presidential nominees on sex and birth control are in the forefront of the national debate, these are now considered vital to our economic and national security, I can only wonder how or why. The religious values and in some cases hypocritical standards of paternalistic agitators  fly in the face of our Constitution (1st Amendment & Article VI), their statements against women and their right to be fully enfranchised members of society with equal opportunity for education and work, even to plan for our future diminish our human value and our past and future contributions.

I have struggled in writing this, fought for words and to keep my emotions in check. I have walked away more than once as I found my normal pragmatism lost, my ability to step back had vanished entirely. My normal ability to see issues from both sides and walk the middle line had flown the coop along with my calm certainty that we, that is women were 100% a part of the American culturalThe future of our daughters - Courtesy of MakingSenseofThings.com and social experiment, that we had gained our right to participate and could not be, would not be consigned to the backroom or required to don the veil. I was wrong, clearly I was wrong.

What does this mean for our daughters?

If we don’t fight back, it means our daughters will have less opportunity than we had. It means everything our foremothers fought for and we took for granted will be lost. What does it mean? It means we will revert to a society where women are simply a commodity, a convenience and nothing more. Our voices will be silenced as we struggle to avoid too many pregnancies, for lack of access to safe birth control. The redefinition from victim to accuser in the case of rape will lower our standing in the courts and in the eyes of society. Should we wonder what is next? Marital abuse cases will change, no longer will be able to seek intervention from the courts as no longer will we have standing.

Is the above simply the worst-case scenario? Perhaps it is, however I lived in the time when the police were called to stop my husband from beating me (1973). They took me to the hospital, they did not arrest him. I have lived through having to hide from a husband who said he was going to kill me if I left; the police did nothing because I was married to him. I have seen that version of the world. I have seen the world that says rape isn’t rape (1968), it is just young boys having fun; even my mother thought it was my fault. I lived with the aftermath of those actions taken against my eleven-year-old body and soul for most of my life, I paid the price.

I have seen the world that says women and young girls have no value, that we are nothing more than –

SLUTS – PROSTITUTES – BITCHES

Where is the outrage?

Filed Under: Politics, Society Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Walking Dead

March 2, 2012 by

Dead this week, the headlines have been filled with tragedy.

Andrew Breitbart, the infamous conservative loudmouth who had been embroiled in more than one scandal in his pursuit to bring down those on the other side of the aisle.

Davy Jones, the front man for The Monkees a TV Pop band of the mid-sixties, many referred to this band as Beatles-lite. Davy Jones never did anything spectacular, never did anything mean spirited either. He was simply a part of many of our lives when we were young.

Two unnamed US Soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan; this brings the total to six since the burning of the Qur’an in the trash pits. Despite our Presidents apology for this unintentional act of blasphemy we have once again created put our soldiers at even greater risk.

Courtesy of Washingtonpost.com

Daniel Parmetor, 17 : Russell King Jr., 17 : Demetrius Hewlin, 17; three teenagers dead at the hand of their classmate for no reason other than they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Their deaths damned near ignored by all but their families, their friends and those whose lives they touched during the short time they had on this earth.

Why do I bring up these deaths? Because of the seven, the most reported in mainstream and social media was Andrew Breitbart, the mean spirited, loudmouthed, bombastic and all too frequent liar. Suddenly, in his death he reached sainthood; even his antagonists are mourning his demise. Perhaps it is that he will no longer be a foil for them, or that they will no longer have a ready target; nonetheless while his death at the age of 43 is certainly sad for his family and friends it should not, in my opinion overshadow others of far more social significance, should it?

Poor Davy Jones, his death became the focus of my ire early in the week when the number of Facebook posts of his passing at 66, far exceeded the number of posts about the five teenagers who were gunned down in Ohio at random, there had been hardly a bleep on the radar of mainstream or social media about that story. This is not to say I was angry at his death, certainly I was not, like many people my age I fondly remember the ridiculousness of The Monkees, their silly and sweet music and Davy Jones himself. My indignation was instead focused on how shallow we seem to be as humans that this death was more important; the death of a long out of the spotlight celebrity was more vital to our national conversation than the death of three teenagers or the soldiers being randomly targeted in Afghanistan.

Courtesy of TheCount.com

Worse still than the what seemed to be the complete disregard of the tragedy in Ohio, was the importance of other stories in the spotlight of mainstream and social media; what story took even more space, more breathless awe from those who would turn our heads and values? Are you afraid to ask? I will tell you because it made me want to run screaming from the room and turn off my connections to the world forever, Angelina Jolie and her new leg pose was far more important than the School Shooting in Chardon, Ohio on Monday 27-Feb-2012, just one day prior.

My problem of course had been building for days, I had been watching for anyone to start discussing the issue of children with guns, school shootings and escalating violence in our schools. Nothing! Nothing at all throughout the day or across the various social media sites I haunt. I was disheartened, to say the very least.

I had to ask the question – “What is wrong with this world, with this nation? Not a word anywhere when 5 children are shot, one already dead.”

These are the answers to my simple question:

Sadly Val, I think it’s because the story just wasn’t shocking/exciting enough. Only 1 dead ? with one handgun ?….Some people want to see multiple bloodied bodies taken on shaky camera-phones. They want to hear phrases like ‘semi-automatic’ and ‘uzi’ and if possible have their TVs vomit the stench of cordite…Sad but true.I don’t know, unless they are afraid that this type of story tends to get sensationalized and may actually serve to promote more of this kind of tragedy by providing attention to it

This actually was covered on ABC World News yesterday but It does seem that celeb silliness is more newsworthy than significant and meaningful news impacting whole communities. It’s an absolute travesty that our news outlets so often reduce themselves to the lowest common denominator.

Lack of God. The more people take God and Jesus out of everything in order that they may do as they please.. the worse our world gets. Simple.

Just as a update: 3 children are now dead… 2nd victim is brain dead, 3rd passed away about 3 hours ago.

I think the answers are both terrible and terrifying. They speak to what is in part wrong with us as a people that we have allowed our attention to be diverted by what is trivial rather than focus on what is most important, most vital to our continuation as a society. The observations by two of the commenters are very specific in they identify the social and media misdirection.

My third commenter provided an observation that is personal and pointed, an opinion as to why this is happening today, it led to a longer discussion that I intend to convert into another post shortly.

At the end of the day though, my problem is this; I have over 4,000 contacts on Facebook. Of those, four of commented on this story and during this week of tragedy I can count on one hand how many of them commented elsewhere. I would however require my calculator to track the number of posts about the deaths of Andrew Breitbart, Davy Jones or God Help Me how Angelina Jolie exposed her leg at the Oscars.

What is wrong with this world?

Filed Under: Society Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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